Book Description
Israel is smaller than New Jersey yet captures a lion's share of headlines. It looks like one country on CNN, a very different one on al-Jazeera. The BBC has its version, The New York Times theirs. But how does Israel look to Israelis? The answers are varied, and they have been brought together here in one of the most original books about Israel in decades. From battlefields to bedrooms to boardrooms, discover the colliding worlds in which an astounding mix of 6.8 million devoutly traditional and radically modern people live. You'll meet "Arab Jews" who fled Islamic countries, dreadlock-wearing Ethiopian immigrants who sing reggae in Hebrew, Christians in Nazareth who publish an Arabic-style Cosmo, young Israeli Muslims who know more about Judaism than most Jews of the Diaspora, ultra-Orthodox Jews on "Modesty Patrols," and more. Interweaving hundreds of personal stories with intriguing new research, The Israelis is lively, irreverent, and always fascinating.
Customer Reviews:
Eye-Opening, Balanced. Astounding insights,.......2007-06-17
There is no other book on Israelis like this. It's very balanced, filled with fascinating insights into the lives of ordinary Israeli women, men and children from vastly different backgrounds. It's fun to read and reread. You'll smile, laugh and cry as you visit discos, battlefields and internet cafes, synagogues and mosques, learning about these hyper modern and very traditional Jewish, Muslim, Christians and Druze -- all Israelis.
This well researched masterpiece truly helps you understand what TV and newspaper reporters are not telling you. Every reporter based in the Middle East should read this book before letting the cameras roll. The Israelis is excellent for tourists, arm chair travelers, students, teachers, and diplomats.
No wonder it's sold all over the world.......2007-05-09
You can't say you know much about Israel without reading this engaging, entertaining, original book. It's really fun to read, balanced and packed with fascinating information.
I hear about Israel on the news nearly everyday-- but until I read this absorbing book, I never knew much about regular Israeli people. The author lets all kinds of young Israelis speak. Female soldiers, Israeli Arabs and Israel Christians and religious and non religious Jews. My friend in Berlin told me about it -- she says The Israelis is selling like hotcakes in Germany.
Incredible Book.......2007-02-23
If you are looking to learn about the real mix if people that we call the Israelis this is the book to read. Having been to Israel and returning aagain for 6 weeks this summer I now have a better insight into the people I met and will be with again. A beautiful book about a beautiful country and its people.
The Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land.......2007-01-05
I thought that I understood the dynamics of Israel in our world today. After reading this book, I can only take my hat off to all of the people in that country that are making it work. Ms. Rosenthal's work is so thorough and yet so interesting to read. I feel better after reading this book that the people living in Israel today will be able to withstand all of the forces that are against them in the troubled world today.
Well written and fun to read -- rich human stories.......2006-12-21
The author put quite a bit of work into writing "The Israelis" - and it shows. This book is especially useful for anyone truly interested in challenging their perceptions built up through a lifetime of mainstream media coverage of Israel.
I read most of the book on a flight to Israel. I found the information immediately useful in better understanding that complex society then finished it on my flight back.
In the amazing timing category, I had just read the chapter on Israel's ultra-Orthodox and their belief that Israel should not have been founded as a secular state (believing that only Messiah should do so) when I was amazed to see a TV news report showing four ultra-orthodox Jews standing next to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at his Holocaust denial conference. Some of the ultra-Orthodox community believes the Holocaust happened as God's punishment to the Jews for not being religious enough. It seems inconsistent to, on one hand participate in a Holocaust denial conference, and on the other believe that the Holocaust was somehow God's punishment, but there they were in Teheran. If it were not for having just read "The Israelis" I would have had no idea why.
I highly recommend this book for anyone wishing to better understand Israel.
Book Description
This book is a chapter-by-chapter analysis and documentation of the power of Israel via the Israeli, Jewish or Pro-Zionist Lobby on US Middle East policy. It raises serious questions as to the primary beneficiary of US policy, and its destructive results for the United States. The extraordinary extent of US political, economic, military and diplomatic support for the state of Israel is explored, along with the means whereby such support is generated and consolidated. Contending that Zionist power in America ensured unconditional US backing for Israeli colonization of Palestine and its massive uprooting of Palestinians, it views the interests of Israel rather than those of Big Oil as the primary cause of the disastrous US wars against Iraq and threats of war against Iran and Syria. It demonstrates and condemns US imitation of Israeli practice as it relates to conduct of the war on terrorism and torture. It sheds light on the AIPAC spying scandal and other Israeli espionage against America; the fraudulent and complicit role of America's academic "terrorist experts" in furthering criminal government policies, and the orchestration of the Danish cartoons to foment antipathy between Muslims and the West. It questions the inability in America to sustain or even formulate a discourse related to the subject of Israeli influence on the United States. It calls for a review of American Mideast policy with a view to reclaiming US independence of action based upon enlightened self-interest and progressive principles.
Customer Reviews:
80% on Target.......2007-09-03
This book is a perfect counter-point to They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby. I review that book also, and recommend both books to every American, just as I recommend the books below that document how the Saudis have bought the Bush Family and the Republican and Democratic parties, neither of which represents We the People.
I would normally remmove one star because the author is a bit over the top in blaming everything on the Zionists and the Neo-Conservative servants, but I went with five stars to offset the mindless rapid Zionists (I hold moderate Jews in total respect). The same week that WIRED Magazine had a cover story on a new two way sustainable energy grid, Dick Cheney was meeting secretly with Enron and Exxon. Iraq happened because Dick Cheney wanted it to happen, the Zionists provided the lies, and the Congress and the media both were intimidated into ignoring General Tony Zinn, General Shinseki, and others including myself, who said quite clearly that this was an insanely bad thing to do with an incalculably high cost.
Over-all this is an extremely welll-researched, well-written presentation of fourteen chapters that are logical and thoughtful and absolutely meritorious of full consideration.
I was very surprised to read, very carefully, two chapters dissecting two of my personal heros, Sy Hersh and Noam Chomsky, and must confess that the author provoked in me thoughtful concern and reflection. I trust Sy and Noam, but the author is so well-organized that he causes me to realize that everybody has multiple levels of agenda, and that we must all take greater care in discriminating our sources of information.
Congressman Tom Moran, who represents my district, has personally said that Zionish have too much influence on Congress, and I agree. Tom Moran has been a very good representative, and he speaks the truth.
Here are some books and a DVD that can put the totally unacceptable Zionist influence on the USA in a larger context:
Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--And How We Take It Back
The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror
Why We Fight
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Petras clearly has limited foreign policy experience.......2007-08-31
Petras is not very well read. It seems that anyone with a PhD can get published these days. I have an incredibly open mind, and Petras fails to convince. Many bash Noam Chomsky for his anti-imperialist views that are reprised by Petras, but Chomsky has a better grasp of the bigger picture. Israel is a puppet for the US - to advance US imperialistic foreign policy for control of the most important natural resource dating back to the last three millenia - not the other way around.
A tendentious rag-bag of bad research and sloppy argument .......2007-08-24
Having spent several years doing a thesis and a book on the role of domestic politics in American policy toward Israel, I'm always looking for more and better information. Unfortunately, that's not what you get in this book. It relies almost entirely on secondary sources, using quotes not to establish facts but to use a different voice for the author's opinions. There is almost no coherent argument at all. Petras conflates the lobby, which is a group of organizations formed to affect policy led by AIPAC, with the entire Jewish community, selected neocons, or Israel. All "facts" are selected to support the author's conclusion that the "Jewish lobby" is all-powerful, ignoring instances where AIPAC lost or was rebuffed by the government of Israel. Jews are treated as monolithic, when the fact is that they are not, even if the loudest voices in the public discourse makes it seem so. Petras does not address the reasons the American citizenry consistently supports Israel over Arabs or Muslims, or the mechanisms by which American beliefs have been fixed and enforced, or the conditions and limits on that support.
This is a deeply disappointing book, the more so because it is being pushed by Amazon as one to buy if you buy the Walt-Mearsheimer book coming out in September. Judging by the earlier articles written by Walt and Mearsheimer, that book will have its problems of evidence and logic as well, but nothing on the order of Petras's book. The shame is that our country really needs an informed debate about policy toward Israel. US policy has been badly flawed, and has done serious damage to US interests, over and above the damage it has done to people living in the region. But to fix it, Americans need to understand how it has gotten to be what it is, and Petras doesn't contribute to understanding.
If you can believe what's in this book, you can believe anything.......2007-08-10
This book is actually so far out of line that it is difficult to write a review of it. It appears to attack Noam Chomsky for being too pro-Israel. And it asks how we can confront Zionism. Well, Zionism is just one aspect of human rights, so I would think that those who can figure out how to confront human rights can figure out how to confront Zionism.
Petras does discuss suicide bombers. That's refreshing, given that some anti-Zionists would rather ignore them. And he says that the suicide bomber is driven by "an effort to redeem the Sacred from the Desecraters."
Well, that's actually interesting. But Petras ought to realize that what goes around can come around. It just might be that some people will regard those who oppose truth, justice, freedom, peace, and human rights as the "desecraters" rather than the "sacred."
Petras does not mention the fact that Israel has been a great success story in many ways. It won its independence from a wicked colonial regime. It defended itself against eliminationist aggressors. It settled for a small amount of land: if every nation were as "greedy" for land as Israel, there would never be any wars over land. It showed respect for the environment: it is the only nation to have more trees on its land in the year 2000 than were there in 1900. And it has been a reasonably tolerant democracy, in spite of the nearly constant assaults on it.
I think that if we consider the truth about how well Israel has done, it is easier to see why many Americans oppose gratuitous aggression against it, and why many Americans feel that it is in America's interest to give it some support. That could be a reason why many American members of Congress show some support for Israel. Yes, there is a pro-Israeli lobby: AIPAC. But it has a very easy product to sell. You won't see much of this in Petras' book either.
There isn't much more that's worth saying about this book.
Pro-American, Pro-Jewish, Anti-Zionist.......2007-07-23
POWER paints an accurate picture of the reality of Israel's control of America from within. It explains how this power isn't only exerted from Israel, but specifically from Americans themselves - Zionist American traitors. For those unfamiliar with this issue, a simple search for AIPAC or "Zionists of America," Amdocs, AEI will be an introduction. It's important to remember that Christians can be Zionists. 'Zionist' is not a euphemism for Jewish. The term 'anti-Semitism' cannot possibly apply. There are many Jewish Americans whose loyalty is to the United States. Zionists try to hijack Judaism so they can smear such truthful books such as this one.
I recommend this book for its truth.
Book Description
David Pryce-Jones believes that France has done more damage to the Middle East than any other country. France encouraged the mass immigration of Arabs and that huge and growing minority in the country now believes that it has rights and claims which have not been met. This minority also believes that Israel should not exist. Middle East geo-politics are spreading from French soil to an increasingly Islamized Europe.
Customer Reviews:
Boring but important.......2007-06-25
A weekly magazine I read has a category of news that it calls "boring but important." This book could be categorized in the same way. This is a history of French foreign policy in the Near East. The author does seem to be unnecessarily hostile to the French, but he also shows how French intrigues and chauvinism have contributed to the turmoil in the area. But both those words have French derivations, don't they?
I do recommend this book to help understand the situation in which we have become embroiled. The more we know, the more likely we are to find a way out.
The Quai d'Orsay's Anti-Semitism.......2007-06-19
David Pryce-Jones has written an insightful and incisive history of the anti-Semitic abd pro-Arab mindset of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs over the past two centuries. Based on original archival research, Pryce-Jones shows how the Ministry's career officials came from similar conservative, Catholic, anti-Republican backgrounds with similar prejudices and predilections. They steered a consistent foreign policy despite the changes of political regimes in France which to this day tries to position France as the Islamic and Arab world's European friend and the opponent of putative Anglo-Saxon and Zionist designs in North Africa and the Middle East. The book is engaging and well written.
Mind Numbingly Boring.......2007-06-14
In Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews, David Pryce-Jones chronicles the convoluted machinations of French foreign policy in the Middle East. Unfortunately, this important material is presented in a manner that renders it almost unreadable.
On page 20, for instance, we make the acquaintance of Jonathon Frankel, Adolphe Thiers, Ulysse de Ratti-Menton, Paul Frederic-Jean Grunebaum, Louis Herbette, Edouard Drumont, and The Marquis de Mores. On page 21 they are joined by Monsieur Kahn, Paul Blanc, M. Hanotaux, Mr. Almond, Madame de Schwartz and J.-B. Barbier.
Keeping track of this growing and obscure cast of characters represents a challenging chore, and after fighting through page after page of this I found myself befuddled and exhausted.
And then there is the writing itself.
Try to get your mind around this whopper of a sentence: "It was not possible for him to guarantee the authenticity of the enclosed document, he explained in a sentence revealing his belief in conspiracy, but it could be linked to information the department had received a few years earlier `on the subject of the preparation in the United States of the bolshevik movement whose trace it might be possible to recover' (M.A.E.-C.P.C/E-Levant/Palestine/1918-1929/Vol.15)".
It's like quicksand - you just get bogged down, you sink in, and eventually you give up.
This is unfortunate.
The author's argument that France's cynical exercise of power in the region has borne and will continue to bear bitter fruit is inherently sound. This message contributes to an understanding of the growing alienation and unrest of the very constituency that the French have sought to court.
Too bad that only the most determined of readers will be able to cut through Pryce-Jones' ponderous prose so as to be able to absorb what he is trying to say.
An interesting introduction but lacks depth.......2007-05-03
The subject of France's relationship and attitude towards Jews and Israel is surely one worthy of study, and David Pryce-Jones does a fair job in detailing the historical origins and patterns of bias within this history. To his credit, he here quotes documents never before made public detailing the depth of the anti-Semitism to be found in France's governing elite. He further does a good job detailing the degree to which France's desire to retain a fig leaf of its vanished glory as a great power and therefore insinuates itself into the conflict in the Middle East in order to confront the United State.
That said, Pryce-Jones does come up short in a number of ways in this thin work. On the subject of anti-Semitism among French elites in the 19th and pre-war 20th century he fails to contextualize how pervasive these attitudes were through out the Western World. Bendersky's "The Jewish Threat" does an excellent and exhaustive job of demonstrating these same attitudes in the US Army just as David Orren does regarding the diplomatic core. In Britain, such prejudices were likewise widespread. Granted, in France they mixed with militant Catholicism to form a particularly noxious brew, but still a discussion of this context would certainly have added to this book.
On the subject of the political ramifications of the presence of a large Muslim population in France, Pryce-Jones again does not delve sufficiently deeply. For example, that the center right candidate David Sarkozy derives support from attacking this portion of the population and arguing for a closer relationship with Israel. Again, a more thorough work would have provided interesting insights on the history and ongoing evolution of this social phenomenon.
Lastly, Pryce-Jones does not give sufficient attention to France's role in the EU and how it has managed to make the Union adopt is strategic vision regarding the Middle East despite other nations which tend to have differing outlooks.
That French policy is arrogant, perfidious, and self serving comes as a surprise to no one with any familiarity of the subject. Pryce-Jones does a good job indicting France's leaders with their own words and details their often serpentine and a moral strategy. For all of that, a subject of such importance deserved a more thorough examination. While this provides a good instruction, another longer work on the subject is surely required.
ignorant political fanaticism.......2007-04-06
David Pryce-Jones is a British neo-con who suffers from the well-known disease of "Franophobia". He has produced a book that is totally at odds with history and is little more the propaganda.
Reading this book, you would have no idea the role France had in the 1950s and 1960s in providing Israel with weapons. The Mirage jets that Israel fought the 1967 war with came from a collaborative relationship with France. France also collaborated with Israel in the 1950s and beyond in the area of nuclear technology and yes even nuclear weapons. In 1956, the French fought with the British and Israelis in a coordinated plan during the suez war. But out of hate, David Pryce-Jones erases the long relationship between Israel and France from history.
He also doesn't quite catch on the fact that France fought a bloody, devistating war in Algeria for many years or how the Crémieux Decree in 1870 gave all Algerian Jews full french citizenship even if they had been in Algeria for generations and had no tie to France. Or explain given his claims about how pro-arab/anti-jewish French diplomats and governments have always been, why such a decree was granted.
The author bashes france for having too many muslims living the country. Of course he has nothing to say about why the UK for decades allowed itself to openly serve as the worldwide base for the worst and most dangerous muslim political groups. Much easier to bash france than it is to accept the grim reality of what goes on at home. Everything he says about muslims in france can be said about almost every country in europe. Immigration is a reality. And the grim reality is that while David Pryce-Jones and his conservative friends whine over the issue, they are unwilling to give up the advantages that a cheap migrant labor underclass provides them.
France plays the "game" in the middle east in exactly the same way that the US, the UK and every other country does. Anyone concerned about the morality of French conduct would best not look at the American role in Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Jordan or any number of other states that the US props up. It would also be best not to look at American-Iraqi relations in the 1980s or Iran-Contra or any number of other sensiative subjects.
The author doeesn't understand France or the French view of the world at all. He is an outsider looking into something that doesn't have the ability to even begin to understand. After the Americans took over the role of being Israel's financial and military backers in the early 1970s, for all their contributions to the security of Israel they were pushed out of the way. If that situation changed, France would change. Like every other country, the relationships of France with the rest of the world are driven by its own interests.
David Pryce-Jones misinterpretes French political culture. He doesn't understand the long tradition in France of asslimilation of all groups into a broader French Culture and the importance of that within the society. That religion and ethnic identity should not play a part in the public sphere. He sees views expressed along these lines as evidence of hatred.
He draws up sinister conspiracies in the French diplomatic corps. But provides little evidence to support his ideas.
He is also upset that Ayatollah Khomeini was in France for four months before he returned to Iran. He doesn't seem to remember that Khomeini spent most of his time in exile in Iraq and Turkey...not France. He also sees the French as somehow putting Khomeini in power but offers nothing beyond conspiracy theory.
He blames France for Mohammad Amin al-Husayni not being put on trial as a war criminal after the second world war. What he leaves out is British role in that decision and British concerns about opinion in the muslim parts of their empire.
There is nothing useful in the book. David Pryce-Jones displays nothing but his own ignorance and fanaticism while being blind to what goes on in his own British back yard.
Book Description
They met in 1990 during the first Palestinian uprising—one was an American Jew who served as a prison guard in the largest prison in Israel, the other, his prisoner, Rafiq, a rising leader in the PLO. Despite their fears and prejudices, they began a dialogue there that grew into a remarkable friendship—and now a remarkable book. It is a book that confronts head-on the issues dividing the Middle East, but one that also shines a ray of hope on that dark, embattled region.
Jeffrey Goldberg, now an award-winning correspondent for The New Yorker, moved to Israel while still a college student. When he arrived, there was already a war in his heart—a war between the magnetic pull of tribe and the equally determined pull of the universalist ideal. He saw the conflict between the Jews and Arabs as the essence of tragedy, because tragedy is born not in the collision of right and wrong, but of right and right.
Soon, as a military policeman in the Israeli army, he was sent to the Ketziot military prison camp, a barbed-wire city of tents and machine gun towers buried deep in the Negev Desert. Ketziot held six thousand Arabs, the flower of the Intifada: its rock-throwers, knifemen, bomb-makers, and propagandists. He realized that this was an extraordinary opportunity to learn from them about themselves, especially because among the prisoners may have been the future leaders of Palestine.
Prisoners is an account of life in that harsh desert prison—mean, overcrowded, and violent — and of Goldberg's extraordinary dialogue with Rafiq, which continues to this day.
We hear their accusations, explanations, fears, prejudices, and aspirations. We see how their relationship deepened over the years as Goldberg returned to Washington, D.C., where Rafiq, quite coincidentally, had become a graduate student, and as the Middle East cycled through periods of soaring hope and ceaseless despair. And we see again and again how these two men—both of them loyal sons of their warring peoples—confront their religious, cultural, and political differences in ways that allowed them to finally acknowledge a true, if necessarily tenuous, friendship.
A riveting, deeply affecting book: spare, impassioned, energetic, and unstinting in its candor about the truths that lie buried within the animosities of the Middle East.
Customer Reviews:
brilliantly perceptive and very sad.......2007-09-18
I read it in 2 nights. It is truly brilliantly perceptive and indescribably sad - he, like so many, see no solution, not really, despite his theme of coexistence. By now there's so much hatred on both sides, so much misunderstanding, so much blood shed unnecessarily, that any happy end is virtually impossible.
Ruth Weiss, Author, Germany
Not a Prisoner: Just Captivated.......2007-06-24
I didn't think that I would be interested in a political kind of book, but this is really a personal story that taught me alot about the middle east and war and peace. What I really liked is that Mr. Goldberg thinks that there is hope. I have given it for gifts and people love it.
deeply personal and informative.......2007-06-13
not only is this book deeply personal to the author but also to this reader.He put into the words that I never could the feeling that I have for Israel and the Jewish People.He explains Zionism for what it really is and means and not for what the pc crowd has twisted it to be.
Having also had dialogue with a muslim that I called friend for over more than 40 years I can attest to the great divide between us.it is hard for most people to understand that different cultures do not think alike regardless of what facts are presented.
other readers have found hope in this book which I am afraid I do not share.
A Must Read.......2007-04-22
Jeffrey Goldberg has written an absolutely facinating book. His unique perspective and the access that has been granted him to interview Muslim leaders, makes his book a "must read" for all those interested in Middle East tensions and problems.For the people, like myself, who are despairing of ever seeing peace in that region, Mr. Goldberg brings back hope that we can learn to understand and appreciate our differences and celebrate our similarities.
Friends of sorts . . ........2007-04-09
Self-categorized on the book jacket as "Current Affairs," this book had me expecting an analysis of Israeli-Palestinian relations, the word "prisoners" in the title no more than a metaphor. In fact, a large part of the book takes place in an actual prison, and while it has much to say about Israeli-Palestinian relations, it is more correctly a memoir of an American Jewish journalist attempting to understand the nature of the conflict that has prevailed in that part of the Middle East since 1948. Finding the political in the personal, he tells of his own beginnings as a youthful Zionist living on Long Island and his years in Israel as his ideals are put to the test working on a kibbutz and then serving in the military police at a desert prison, where he first meets and attempts to befriend a Palestinian prisoner, Rafiq.
Later, working as a journalist based first in Jerusalem and then in Washington DC, the author travels often to Gaza and the West Bank to talk with Palestinians, many of them released prisoners, including his friend Rafiq. His conversations with Rafiq become a commentary on an accompanying account of the interlude of hope for resolution in the Oslo talks, the eventual collapse of the peace process, and the rise of suicide bombings. On both levels, it is a search for common ground that is as elusive as peace itself. The author clings to the hope that where friendship is possible between two men who cannot agree on anything else, coexistence is possible between Arabs and Jews.
This is a well written book that immerses the reader in the deeply bitter and violent conflict that has raged in this corner of the world for decades. The greater part of the book is peopled by Palestinians, each specifically drawn as they reveal themselves to the author, and representing a host of political points of view, from the reasonable to the extreme. Meanwhile, as the author's initial Leon Uris-fed idealism fades, the Israelis themselves are often portrayed as far less than admirable. Leavening the darkness inherent in his subject, the author often finds a kind of grim humor, frequently at his own expense, as he struggles to bring the light of reason to what becomes increasingly a litany of folly on all sides. Very much New Yorker style writing in its use of a personal perspective and its slow-moving, meandering structure, "Prisoners" makes for fascinating and rewarding reading. However, do not expect to be uplifted or reassured by its vision of a world mired in mutual distrust and hatred.
Average customer rating:
- A Bridge Among Jewish Communities
- a wink of the numinous
- An Unusual Delight
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With Signs & Wonders: An International Anthology of Jewish Fabulist Fiction
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ASIN: 0967968356 |
Book Description
Bringing together 24 contemporary writers from 19 different countries, this anthology captures the exuberant storytelling tradition of the Jewish people that has been shaped by centuries of legends, folklore, and mysticism. These writers—from Central Asia, Iran, Morocco, Russia, Siberia, Israel, Latin America, Europe, and the United States—show the diverse strains of the Jewish fabulist imagination. Teeming with passion and humor and rooted in the triumphant and tragic history of a people, these stories illustrate—regardless of language and locale—the Jewish fascination with the mysteries of the imagination and the endless possibilities of life.
Customer Reviews:
A Bridge Among Jewish Communities.......2001-09-04
Others have praised the delightful stories in this rich volume, so I won't spend my time repeating--although I may well say that every good word spoken about this anthology is true. What I shall emphasize is how extraordinarily this book bridges various Jewish communities and sensibilities.
Contemporary Jewish culture has become extremely fragmented during the last fifty or one hundred years. Then here comes a book including Jewish stories from nearly two dozen countries, showing that we all have so much in common despite our differences. Jews in Morocco can relate on these pages to Jews of Russia and Iran and Argentina and Mexico and Siberia and Finland and France and Israel of course, and so on. Ashkenazi and Sephardi and Mizrahi all together sharing the same quests. This book PROVES that we are a united people despite our petty differences. THIS book should be the constitution of the World Jewish Congress. THIS book brings Jewish diversity together in one volume. THIS book should be given to every bar and bat mitzvah around the world. Then we would be one people as in ancient times.
a wink of the numinous.......2001-07-26
This is a delightful anthology with an intriguing title. As it appears, "fabulist" has to do with imagination, in this case Jewish, which raises each story to the level of a mystical adventure. For example, Tehila Lieberman's "Anya's Angel" with wistfulness and delicacy evokes a touching love story with many links to the infinite; Daniel Jaffe's own "Sarrushka and her Daughter" is a highly intriguing folk legend exploring extra-sensory powers in individuals. And here are, to my mind, the best six: Mark Apelman's "A Visitor's Guide to Berlin" is an amazingly powerful evocation of Holocaust memories and an utterly convincing artistic emplotment of those memories, in their intensity and brutal reality, as inhabiting modern-day Berlin and claiming a reality that is more than real. Yakov Shechter's "Midday," a story about the search for meaning and about shaping one's own destiny, has a strong atmosphere of the numinous - the clouds keep darkening, the mystical intent comes more and more into focus - towards the resolution, still mysterious yet imaginatively satisfying. Joan Leegant's "The Tenth" is a powerfully imagined story of a rabbi whose faith, learning, tolerance, whose intellectual and spiritual endurance are callenged and tested by the appearance of an unusual candidate to complete a minyan. (A similar case of a rabbi who is tested by a rebellious pupil is treated flatly and unimaginatively by Steven Sher in "Tsuris," which only shows that what matters and what makes a story fabulous (excuse the pun!) is not the fabula but the quality of imagination and a way with language.) Ruth Knafo Setton's "The Cat Garden" is electrifying, memorable, descriptively evocative. The anthology ends with two of the strongest stories: Dina Rubina's "Apples from Shlitzbutter's Garden," which explores the semi-mystical ways in which our forefathers' inheritance follows its paths into the consciousness of the younger generation, does so with singular warmth and a sense of humor that makes everything vivid. Here the translator (who is Jaffe himself) does an exceptional job conveying an impression of a friendly, chatty narrator communicating real warmth and charm - and yet the story touches on the inevitably painful theme of the memories of our collective past. The last story in the collection is Steve Stern's "the Tale of a Kite," a marvelous fable humorously teaching us a lesson about human nature as well as making an eloquent case for the human need to believe utterly, unsceptically and completely. As in all anthologies, unevenness is the other side of variety.Given so many excellent stories it is a mild disappointment to have alonside some weak ones, such as Galina Vromen's "Sara's Story," Moacyr Scliar's "The Prophets of Benjamin Bok," Steven Sher's "Tsuris" and Cyrille Fleishman's "One day, Victor Hugo." These stories' weakness is, predominantly, in their defective imagination, which treats the supernatural realm as a source of tricks rather than of significance. In the middle stand stories such as John Shepley's "A Golem in Prague" - good, gripping writing that keeps the reader in suspense for something meaningful, yet the design of the story is incomplete, as if it is waiting to fill a mould not yet fully in view. To conclude - "fabulist" or "magical" or whatever we choose to term it, the common denominator in these stories is a wink of the numinous, a pull towards that extra significance which makes life gain a richer hue. This is, if we generalize, what connects the best fabulist stories with all truly good literature. Clearly, I feel enriched by having read this anthology.
An Unusual Delight.......2001-06-14
Over the years, I have read quite a number of Jewish-themed and other anthologies. I certainly expected this one to be of interest, but was taken aback at its freshness, its unique approach, its range and cultural sensitivity. Not only is the emphasis on spirituality and mysticism refreshing, but this book showcases numerous writers on the rise with whom I had not been familiar. I will now seek out their books. And so many translations of works that are simply not available in English elsewhere! This anthology introduced me to writers and literary cultures I'd known only marginally. Kudos to the editor. My favorite stories were those by E. Seltz of Israel (originally from Siberia of all places!), M. Scliar of Brazil, A. Muniz-Huberman of Mexico, and a few from U.S. writers--D. Jaffe (the editor), R. Knafo Setton, and M. Apelman. Contemporary issues of questioning the presence of spirituality in our lives, ancient historical themes, Holocaust themes, and as Mr. Jaffe says in his Introduction, several stories on the theme of Jew as other. (One would expect the Introduction to be a useful overview for college students, by the way.) Half men authors, half women authors, secular and religious perspectives, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi sensibilities. Quite a representative mix of global Jewish culture. And fine literature at the same time. A must read.
Book Description
The first book to speak out against the pervasive influence of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on American politics, policy, and institutions resonates today as never before. With careful documentation and specific case histories, former congressman Paul Findley demonstrates how the Israel lobby helps to shape important aspects of U.S. foreign policy and influences congressional, senatorial, and even presidential elections. Described are the undue influence AIPAC exerts in the Senate and the House and the pressure AIPAC brings to bear on university professors and journalists who seem too sympathetic to Arab and Islamic states and too critical of Israel and its policies. Along with many longtime outspoken critics, new voices speaking out include former President Jimmy Carter, U.S. Representative Cynthia McKinney, Senator Robert Byrd, prominent Arab-American Dr. Ziad Asali, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and journalist Charles Reese. In addition, the lack of open debate among politicians with regard to the U.S. policy in the Middle East is lamented, and AIPAC is blamed in part for this censorship. Connections are drawn between America’s unconditional support of Israel and the raging anti-American passions around the world—and ultimately the tragic events of 9/11. This replaces 1556520735.
Customer Reviews:
FINDLEY AMONG FIRST TO SPEAK ABOUT BRINGING AMERICA BACK.......2007-10-03
Findley, a pure PRO-AMERICAN is one of the rare congressman with a backbone who,... puts America first. He was and is the pioneer of bringing attention to Americas getting off course with a spineless and cowardly Legislature - especially today. I feel Findley's courageous and 'making America' aware of the cancer within it book should be read and taken VERY seriously. Outstanding and other A+ scholarly works on this topic are: Jimmy Carter's: Palestine:Peace Not Apartheid; ans most recent is "The Israel Lobby," by Mearshiemer and Walt. These are also excellent objective reads that bring true clarity to what's really going on today.
Nice try. It's the Norwegians we need to be worrying about........2007-09-17
Do not read this book. I have never in my life read so many lies in one book. He is just trying to divert our nation's attention from the lobbies that are doing the most harm: The pro-choice movement, the teachers unions, the environmental lobby, and, most theatening of all - the Norwegians.
These are the nefarious organizations with unlimited financial power and unrivaled political and media influence who use violence and intimidation to force their will upon our nation. Shame on Amazon for giving voice to this author who is obviously bent on the annihilation of God's Chosen Race.
Harder Read But Most Worthy, Start with the Other Book.......2007-09-03
This book is a perfect counter-point to The Power of Israel in the United States. I review that book also, and recommend both books to every American, just as I also recommend the books that document how the Saudis have bought the Bush Family and the Republican and Democratic parties, neither of which represents We the People. Completely apart from the venal immorality of Dick Cheney (see my review of Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency in which I itemized the 23 high crimes and misdemeanors documented by that book), the fact is that Congress has been bought by multiple parties, and no longer represents We the People.
This book is a harder, longer read, so I recommend you start with the other book. As with the other book, this book is a strongly documented and very lengthy catalog of the sins of the Zionists and the Israeli Government, not at all against the moderate Jews and their legitimate concerns. I have seen Gaza and Beirut, and what Israel has done to the Palestinians, to the former "Paris" of the Middle East, combined with their Assault on the Liberty, is unforgivable.
This book logically catalogs how the Zionists intimidate even such a person as Ted Turner, who was forced to back down when he said both sides were committing terrorism (there is in fact a UN Resolution that finds Israel guilty of genocide and racism, but then that is one of those "fog facts" that our totalitarian monsters choose to ignore.
The author organizes the book around how Zionists silence the small and the weak, while buying out the Oval Office, the Congress, the media, while also subverting academic freedon.
I especially like the author's conclusion, "What Price Israel?" The US taxpayer is subsidizing Israeli genocide and Israeli idiocy, and the US and Israel appear to be the last two countries to continue to believe in the value of force that is both unaffordable and unsustainable in an unconquerable world.
Congressman Tom Moran, who represents my district, has personally said that Zionish have too much influence on Congress, and I agree. Tom Moran has been a very good representative, and he speaks the truth.
Here are some books and a DVD that can put the totally unacceptable Zionist influence on the USA in a larger context:
Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--And How We Take It Back
The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Findley is Pathologically Obsessed With Israel and its American Supporters.......2007-08-28
If readers want to read a book that evinces a pathological obsession with Israel and its American supporters and blames them for every problem under the sun, then by all means buy this book. But if you don't, avoid this book like the plague. Paul Findley is a former Congressman who now serves as a pro-Arab propagandist and Palestinian apologist. When I read reviews that refer to him as objective, I have to laugh. Findley is as one-sided and biased in his views as they come.
The absurdity of Findley's thesis is easy to prove. People and institutions are constantly "speaking out" to attack Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in the most vicious terms. What punishment do they face for doing this from the Israel lobby? None whatsoever. No one is suppressing their free speech. Jimmy Carter and Professors Walt and Mearsheimer, among others, are free to present their biased and distorted views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the influence of the Israeli lobby without retaliation. Some criticism, yes, but no suppression of free speech.
One might ask why Findley was defeated in his Congressional reelection bid some years ago by a candidate supported by AIPAC? I would submit that it was Findley's greater concern for Yasir Arafat's interests than those of his own constituents that was responsible for his defeat, not any conspiracy on the part of Israel's supporters.
I note that many of the reviewers have repeated the standard and tired line that one can't criticize Israel without being labeled anti-Semitic. One can criticize Israel and the Israeli lobby without being anti-Semitic. Unfortunately, many of the reviews posted here show that some of the people who criticize Israel and the Israeli lobby resort to anti-Semitic stereotypes and cross the line into open anti-Semitism and bigotry, a la the Protocols of the Elders of Zion forgery. If you believe that there's a sinister Jewish conspiracy to control the U.S. government and media for nefarious purposes, you hold anti-Semitic views. For those of you who don't hold those views, stay away from this awful book.
Eye opening.......2007-07-28
Extremely well written and informative book about the powerful Israel lobby that operates under the radar--often times against the interests of the US.
Amazon.com
Was IBM, "The Solutions Company," partly responsible for the Final Solution? That's the question raised by Edwin Black's IBM and the Holocaust, the most controversial book on the subject since Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. Black, a son of Holocaust survivors, is less tendentiously simplistic than Goldhagen, but his thesis is no less provocative: he argues that IBM founder Thomas Watson deserved the Merit Cross (Germany's second-highest honor) awarded him by Hitler, his second-biggest customer on earth. "IBM, primarily through its German subsidiary, made Hitler's program of Jewish destruction a technologic mission the company pursued with chilling success," writes Black. "IBM had almost single-handedly brought modern warfare into the information age [and] virtually put the 'blitz' in the krieg."
The crucial technology was a precursor to the computer, the IBM Hollerith punch card machine, which Black glimpsed on exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, inspiring his five-year, top-secret book project. The Hollerith was used to tabulate and alphabetize census data. Black says the Hollerith and its punch card data ("hole 3 signified homosexual ... hole 8 designated a Jew") was indispensable in rounding up prisoners, keeping the trains fully packed and on time, tallying the deaths, and organizing the entire war effort. Hitler's regime was fantastically, suicidally chaotic; could IBM have been the cause of its sole competence: mass-murdering civilians? Better scholars than I must sift through and appraise Black's mountainous evidence, but clearly the assessment is overdue.
The moral argument turns on one question: How much did IBM New York know about IBM Germany's work, and when? Black documents a scary game of brinksmanship orchestrated by IBM chief Watson, who walked a fine line between enraging U.S. officials and infuriating Hitler. He shamefully delayed returning the Nazi medal until forced to--and when he did return it, the Nazis almost kicked IBM and its crucial machines out of Germany. (Hitler was prone to self-defeating decisions, as demonstrated in How Hitler Could Have Won World War II.)
Black has created a must-read work of history. But it's also a fascinating business book examining the colliding influences of personality, morality, and cold strategic calculation. --Tim Appelo
Book Description
IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.
Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.
But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.
IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich's needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.
IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries -- all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction.
Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit.
Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews -- how did Hitler get the names?
Download Description
'IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany - beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and it's subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s. IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral ageements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries - all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction. Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit. Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews - How did Hitler get the names?
Customer Reviews:
IBM and the Holocaust.......2006-12-08
I did not want to read this book.
My grandfather worked for International Time Recording (ITR) in Endicott, NY before IBM was formed and Mr. Watson came on board. My father's first job, at the age of seventeen, was caretaker of the Watson Homestead. My family has had a hand in virtually every product that issued from the IBM manufacturing effort since its inception in 1924. I have deep affection for the company my family labored to build.
I approached "IBM and the Holocaust" with a high degree of skepticism. The book sat on my nightstand for two months before I opened it. Finally picked it up for the sake of completing my 14-book IBM historical reading cycle.
This book is astounding. It is impeccably researched, artfully written, highly detailed, painstakingly documented, remarkably objective and thoroughly engaging.
"IBM and the Holocaust" has finally exposed the undeniable truth: IBM became the world's most powerful corporation largely because it assisted in identifying, cataloging and exterminating millions of innocent people for Hitler. The evil that lurks in IBM history was not exposed previously only because IBM management was smart enough and powerful enough to "hide its tracks" in Nuremburg. No investigator has ever dug deeper into IBM history than Edwin Black.
A close reading of the book makes it absolutely clear that Mr. Watson (IBM CEO) knew the exact purpose, goal and expected outcome of the IBM solution in Europe. The book details the fact that unlike previous IBM engagements for the Third Reich that were completed by Dehomag (IBM's German subsidiary), the engagement in Romania (1941) was conducted directly under the management of IBM New York. That engagement resulted in the swift identification, transportation and extermination of hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews. All in the name of "IBM."
As a result of reading "IBM and the Holocaust", I no longer view Mr. Watson as the glamorous benevolent industrial icon depicted in hollywoood newsreels. Though the affectionate "shop talk" tossed through the air when I was young still captures my imagination, Mr. Watson is no longer the focus of my unqualified admiration.
Watson, for me, now stands beside Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Mellon, Jeffrey Skilling, Kenneth Lay and all the other American Industrialists throughout history who had many fine qualities yet are outrageously flawed--so good yet so very, very bad.
This book is remarkable. Have since read "Internal Combustion", Banking on Baghdad" and "War Against the Weak."
Edwin Black is "the bomb."
If you have an interest in history, corporations, corruption, good, bad, evil or fine nonfiction; you will appreciate the works of Edwin Black.
NancyRae Kjelgaard
Tallahassee, FL
December 7, 2006
a tale of two maniacs.......2006-08-03
Once upon a time in America there was a tabulating company executive who had almost done time for illegal business practices. This executive believed that the only way that he could stay in business was by selling the best tabulating machines on the market, and mercilessly crushing his competitors. Unfortunately for humanity, this maniac was doing business in a country run by another maniac, who had come to power by fomenting ethnic hatred. Even as things went down the drain, and the persecution of the Jews and other minorities reached loathsome heights, the American business executive didn't want to terminate his activities in Germany, and was supportive enough of the Nazis to accept the highest medal the Nazis could give him.
Even worse, by the time the war was in full swing, and the Nazis began the Holocaust the maniac of which I write, Tom Watson of IBM, saw no need to terminate IBM's business relationships with the Nazi governments, and, provided irreplaceable services in organizing the Holocaust. In France, where a courageous IBM employee refused to cooperate, the Nazis were "only" able to murder 25% of the Jews. Where IBM cooperated, as in the Netherlands, rates of 75% resulted. Life isn't fair; the brave Frenchman who refused to cooperate died at Dachau, the company that gladly cooperated wasn't punished. The horror, the horror.
Edwin Black has done a superb job of documenting (most of) this horror story in indisputable detail. Nevertheless I suspect that he doesn't tell the entire story, particularly when he claims that nobody guessed what was going on. Anyone who understands just how indispensable IBM's punch card machines were to the Allies during the war, "our ability to organize wouldn't have been remotely near what it was without them" to paraphrase one mathematician involved, must have wondered how the Germans were able to coordinate the logistics of their Blitzkrieg. Anyone in the punch card industry would have known of IBM's presence in Germany.
All in all this is a great book illustrating the banality of evil.
This book is chilling, and is a "must read".......2006-04-21
Reading this book, and the knowledge that IBM had during WWII and the genocide of millins of humans puts a face on cooprorate greed and hate unjlike any of the comparisions given to Halliburton today. IBM aided Hitler in his termination of the Jews, and others, and it has never, to my knowledge owned up to this, nor have they done any actions to make changes in the way companies help with genocide. Great book, great writer.
An Extraordinary Work.......2006-03-18
As proud as I am to be an American, this thoroughly documented, utterly revealing book, has for the first time made me look at the extents to which U.S. corporate greed and the amorality of one man, Thomas J. Watson, chairman of IBM, will go to satisfy there lust for money and power.
It is hard to believe that it took from the early 30's to 2001 before anyone, anywhere, put it all together. How could an American icon of business turn out to be a war criminal and go on to preside over, and build on to, a company which most of us used to consider as a proud example of American business ingenuity and integrity.
A shocking, sickening, and gut wrenching account of the most vile group of humans ever assembled, the Germans of the Third Reich, and how they could not possibly have achieved the sheer numbers of murders during the holocaust, had it not been for day to day involvement, and complete knowledge, of IBM and Thomas J. Watson.
I highly recommend this book.
Painful but needs to be exposed.......2005-08-14
I recently finished reading your extremely interesting book "IBM and the Holocaust" and want to commend you for a thorough investigation of the subject. Several years ago I too had been to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and seen the exhibit of the Dehomag Hollerith machine and wondered what was the entire story. Now I know, and I no longer view IBM the same way as I once did. Thanks for a well researched and interesting, if depressing, examination of when corporate loyalty and profits are placed above human suffering and survival.
Amazon.com
Postville, Iowa (population 1,478), seems an unlikely place to find a sizable Jewish population, let alone an ultra-Orthodox Lubavitcher population. It is, after all, in the heart of pork country, and the world headquarters of the Lubavitchers is far away in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. But when the Hygrade meat processing plant, just outside Postville, went belly-up, threatening the town with decline, Sholom Rubashkin bought it and turned it into a glatt kosher processing plant, complete with shochtim and a rabbinical inspectorate. By the late 1980s, "Postville had more rabbis per capita than any other city in the United States, perhaps the world."
The enterprise was a huge international success, with its kosher meats exported even to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Jewish population grew to 150, and they were rich. The town was saved, and the people were grateful. All's well that ends well? Not quite. The Hasidim kept to themselves, did things their own way, and basically had no interest in integrating into Postville. And why would they? Their laws are strict, their mission clear, their community defined by race and religion. They are not interested in watermelon socials or coffee klatches at the diner. Their little boys do not swim with their little girls, are not educated together, and do not go on play dates with goyim. Small-town Iowans, on the other hand, are very friendly. They know each other's news, they support each other's businesses, they wish each other Merry Christmas, they want you to feel at home. They don't like that the new townspeople stomp up the street hunched over, talking in a foreign language and looking straight through them when greeted. They really don't like it when one of the newcomers drives around town with a 10-foot candelabra strapped to his car playing music at full volume for eight consecutive winter nights. They don't actually know about menorahs or Hanukkah.
Into this comes secular Jew Stephen Bloom, a professor at the University of Iowa. By the time he arrived in Postville, the town was riven along religious lines. One of the townspeople was running for mayor on the sole platform of annexation of the land on which the plant stood. Rubashkin was threatening that he'd shut the plant and leave if that came to pass. Bloom closely considers both sides, and the result is a wonderful book. It is a fascinating tale of culture clash in the American heartland: the John Deere cap meets the black fur hat. It is a book about identity and community and what it means to be American. It covers all the things you aren't supposed to talk about at the dinner table--religion, politics, and even sex. It is full of suspense: Will the plant be annexed? Will the Jews leave? And it is also Bloom's exploration of his own sense of belonging. --J. Riches
Book Description
In 1987, a group of Lubavitchers, one of the most orthodox and zealous of the Jewish sects, opened a kosher slaughterhouse just outside tiny Postville, Iowa (pop. 1,465). When the business became a worldwide success, Postville found itself both revived and divided. The town's initial welcome of the Jews turned into confusion, dismay, and even disgust. By 1997, the town had engineered a vote on what everyone agreed was actually a referendum: whether or not these Jews should stay.
The quiet, restrained Iowans were astonished at these brash, assertive Hasidic Jews, who ignored the unwritten laws of Iowa behavior in almost every respect. The Lubavitchers, on the other hand, could not compromise with the world of Postville; their religion and their tradition quite literally forbade it. Were the Iowans prejudiced, or were the Lubavitchers simply unbearable?
Award-winning journalist Stephen G. Bloom found himself with a bird's-eye view of this battle and gained a new perspective on questions that haunt America nationwide. What makes a community? How does one accept new and powerfully different traditions? Is money more important than history? In the dramatic and often poignant stories of the people of Postville - Jew and gentile, puzzled and puzzling, unyielding and unstoppable - lies a great swath of America today.
Customer Reviews:
For Everyone.......2007-07-16
What is cultural identity? Matzoh ball soup or holy scripture? John Deere caps or yarmulkes? Postville is a wonderful book because it isn't written as a traditional news report that pretends to be objective and removed from the subject at hand.
Stephen Bloom's book is worth reading because he makes clear that every observer brings predjudices and what Postville reveals is the author's discovery and coming to grips with his own set of beliefs. Are deeply religious people more moral than others? Are American values of freedom really available to everyone?
As an author of a memoir myself (Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars) that deals with culture clash in Iowa--I couldn't get a flat fixed on my rental car because "Men should know how to change a tire."--I can report that Bloom has nailed the difficulty outsiders have in small towns.
I have also seen first hand how people portrayed in a book will find the worst thing the book says about them and lock onto it. You can see that in the reviews of Postville here on Amazon. Jews think Bloom is an anti-semite. Iowans think he is a snarky city boy.
But Bloom does his best to show all sides of everyone in the story, which makes his narrative more, not less, believable.
Like the book The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust that talks about the poor reception for some European Jews by their bretheren in Israel, this book is honest.
Read it, and learn what Bloom has laid out so clearly: all of us are ready to blame someone else for our problems.
Bloom: Journalist, or Embarassed Jew?.......2007-04-17
Firstly, I enjoyed and was fascinated by Postville. Second, I'm a non-Orthodox, yet identifying Jew who hails from the Midwest and who attended University of Missouri-Columbia, quite similar to Iowa City. So yes, Bloom's descriptions were accurate and yes, the stereotypes are lived up to (feed commercials on TV, little in the way of ethnic culture). I also have had contact with ultra-Orthodox Jews; specifically, I have Lubavitch relatives. So I'm qualified to "judge", as it were, all sides involved, or at least no less qualified than Bloom.
Secondly, I too "came down on the side of" the Iowans. In fact, because of Bloom's descriptions of the Lubavitchers -- so antithetical to the behavior that I've come to expect from them -- I began to suspect that perhaps they were not actually Lubavitchers, but posing as Lubavitchers, or some sort of spinoff sect a la those Mormons you read about from whom the church hurries to disassociate itself. In any case, the Postville Lubavitchers certainly didn't resemble any Lubavitchers I've met.
Mostly, a seemingly trivial detail bugged me the entire way through; I say "seemingly", because it actually encapsulates (as does Bloom's stay in Iowa) what I call the American Jewish dilemma, i.e., must we be chained to an urban existence in order to remain Jewish? I'm referring to several instances wherein Bloom went out of his way to tell us that he ate treif food. Not just treif, as in "We stopped in at McDonald's for burgers on our way home", but specifically pork. The minute I read this, my respect for him dropped several notches. What was he thinking by deliberately spelling out to the reader his non-observance of kashrut? That this would endear him to gentile readers? This matter angered me far more than his unsavory descriptions of the Lubavitchers; while he can't control their behavior, he can control his own, or at least not "diss" Jewish observance from the rooftops.
The reviewer who pointed out that the locals' anger at the Lubavitchers' deserting their businesses for Wal-Mart may have been displaced anger at Wal-Mart was on target. After all, we all know what Wal-Mart is doing to small-town America's economy.
I also liked how Bookaholic put it regarding the Lubavitchers' behavior feeding into stereotypes. Indeed. However, the leap that some reviewers make to such behavior explaining anti-Semitism and pogroms -- whoa! That's forbidden territory. Don't even attempt to go there. That's where my intercultural tolerance ends, people. I had assumed that folks who read books are more incisive than that. Or do you, too, believe that an Easter newspaper headline reading "He Is Risen" is actually jounalism?
Read between the lines of this book and learn some of the reasons why Jews are hated.......2006-11-29
Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America looks at how tensions gradually erupt between locals and hasidic Jews who opened a kosher slaughterhouse in a rural farming community. This book was written by a secular Jew from the west coast who had moved to Iowa to take a job as a university professor.
While the author certainly has issues of his own (he actually cites the scoutmaster mentioning Jesus Christ at his sons Boy Scouts meeting as an example of anti-semitism he has experienced in Iowa!) I don't think the most rabid Jew hater could have done a better job of making the Hasidic Lubavitchers look bad. After being taken under the wing of Lubavitchers who wanted to convert him, as a secular Jew, to their Hasidic sect, Bloom in the end exposes the Lubavitchers worst traits. From their petty haggling over prices in local stores over the smallest of items, to their racist attitudes towards "goyim" and "schwartzs", while simultaneously accusing anybody who disagrees with them of being anti-semitic, to their refusal to pay debts and honor contracts in business dealings and other bullying business practices, their importation of illegal immigrant riff raff to this once homogenous crime free town to cheapen their labor costs, even their cruel way of slaughtering animals to make the meat kosher are brought to light. All of these factors, along with the Hasidic Jews refusal to participate in the community other than by using it to make themselves rich, gradually over a period of time caused major tensions between multi-generational locals and the Lubavitchers. On the other hand he does show some of their admirable traits also, like being family oriented and their obsessivly strict adherence to preserving their own culture and customs.
Overall this a very good book that I would recomend to anybody interested in Jewish culture, or anybody that wants to delve into reasons why Jews, who seem to never be able to see the reasons themselves, are often disliked, throughout the world and history, by people of many races and cultures. You can also learn a lot about the tensions and infighting that goes on between secular Jews like Bloom and the Orthodox Jews too.
Disappointing in every way.......2006-09-29
Although the author purports to take an objective view of what he calls the clash of cultures in Postville, his portrait of the conflicts in the town are in no way nuanced or thoughtful. Clearly his ambivalence about his own religious identity has shaped his perception of life in Postville. The author has not taken the time to learn about the Orthodox Jewish traditions he so smugly and sanctimoniously dismisses as "guilt-producing." He manages to reduce his concept of meaningful Judaism to bagels, lox, and pastrami. By the end of the book I found myself wondering why he had bothered to identify himself as Jewish since his view of the religious traditions he derides seem so superficial to him. To me the book failed the basic test of intellectual honesty and clarity of thought. It was in addition, poorly written.
Badly written ant-Semitism.......2006-08-03
I found this book wholly disappointing. It was an extremely narrow and one sided view of not only the Lubavitch community but also Judaism itself. Like the author, I too am Jewish, however, I found the references to common day Jewish practices (such as donning tefillin) offensive, as this was seen as alien whereas in Judaism this is commonplace. Anyone who has had any contact with the Lubavitch community will find them nothing short of extremely hospitable, charitable and welcoming. With regard to their suspicion of the secular world: I think this book is proof, if it were required, that this type of suspicion is justifiable. In defence of the Postville community specifically, I'm amazed that there is little mention of the employment capabilities which the factories bring and the significant number of non-Jews employed by the family. I'm saddened that a Jew insecure as he must be with his own faith, feels it necessary to write a book like this. The book is at best badly written anti-Semitism and at worst a very dangerous attack on a religion to which Mr Bloom claims to belong, as is shown by some of the sadly anti-Semitic comments posted here. At this time in our history, Jews should be rallying to support each other instead of factionalising openly.
Book Description
This monumental and fascinating book, the product of seven years of original research, will forever change the terms of the debate about the conflicting claims of the Arabs and the Jews in the Middle East.
The weight of the comprehensive evidence found and brilliantly analyzed by historian and journalist Joan Peters answers many crucial questions, among them: Why are the Arab refugees from Israel seen in a different light from all the other, far more numerous peoples who were displaced after World War II? Why, indeed, are they seen differently from the Jewish refugees who were forced, in 1948 and after, to leave the Arab countries to find a haven in Israel? Who, in fact, are the Arabs who were living within the borders of present-day Israel, and where did they come from?
Joan Peters's highly readable and moving development of the answers to these and related questions will appear startling, even to those on both sides of the argument who have considered themselves to be in command of the facts. On the basis of a definitive weight of hitherto unexamined population and other historical data, much of it buried in untouched archives, Peters demonstrates that Jews did not displace Arabs in Palestine-just the reverse: Arabs displaced Jews; that a hidden but major Arab migration and immigration took place into areas settled by Jews in pre-Israel Palestine; that a substantial number of the Arab refugees called Palestinians in reality had foreign roots; that for every Arab refugee who left Israel in 1948, there was a Jewish refugee who fled or was expelled from his Arab birthplace at the same time-today's much discussed Sephardic majority in Israel is in fact composed mainly of these Arab-born Jewish refugees or their offspring; that Britain, the Mandatory power, winked at and even encouraged Arab immigration into Palestine between the two World Wars; that by disguising the Arab immigrants as "indigenous native Palestinian Arabs," the British justified their restrictions on Jewish immigration and settlement, dooming masses of European Jews to destruction in the Nazi camps.
Joan Peters also unfolds a historical record to shatter the widely held belief that Arabs and Jews harmoniously coexisted for centuries in the Arab world-the fact is that the Jews, along with other non-Muslims, were second-class citizens, oppressed in the Muslim world for more than a millennium. And this continuing prejudicial tradition of hostility underlies, as well, every Arab action toward the state of Israel.
In addition to her pioneering archival researches, Joan Peters has frequently traveled in the Middle East, conducting numerous interviews and gathering the personal observations of the first-rate reporter she is. The result is a book that has already had a major impact on policy discussions of one of the most vital and intractable of the world's problems, shrouded until now in a fog of misinformation and ignorance.
Distributed exclusively by Jonathan David Publishers.
Customer Reviews:
The Following Fantasy words may be harmful to your psychological health .......2007-10-15
West Bank, Gaza strip, Palestinians, Both sides, Apartheid wall, palestinian culture, palestinian food. palestinian language, palestinian dress..........These and many more catchphrases and buzzwords are the language of jew hatred.
From Time immemorial is not only a fact based exposition on the actual population makeup of the holy land but also reveals the many myriads of ways that the reinhabiting of modern israel by the inheritors of the land has been attempted to be destroyed by the myriads of enemies of the chosen people. The turks, the british, the united nations, the WASP establishment in the US, and of coruse the barbaric thieving arabs.
Brilliantly researched and footnoted.......2007-09-30
If this is a work of fiction it is the most profusely researched and superbly footnoted work of fiction in existence. The copious footnotes are all one needs to refer to in order to dispel the ad-hominem attacks and typical accusations of 'Zionist propaganda' that appear in the reviews of the apologists for Arab propaganda.
When the Arabs could not defeat Israel militarily they took the next most effective course - to engage in the most Orwellian 'turnspeak' in order to turn history on its head.
Ultimately, this tiny notch of land is not the problem for the 'Palestinians'. It is 60 years of self-imposed refugeeship which exists for no reason other than to be a propaganda weapon against Israel. A glance at a map puts the whole thing in stark perspective. A tiny country surrounded by countries which, openly or tacitly, see the destruction of Israel as a holy duty.
This book should be required reading in schools and parliaments across the globe.
"Mrs. Peters' Palestine".......2007-09-30
Joan Peters' work is a well-known hoax and yet it continues to enjoy best selling status at amazon. The book is a complete work of fiction- 600+ pages of hogwash replete with Zionist propaganda. Either the reviewers are simply ignorant or engaged in a deceptive project no different than the author (the latter seems more likely).
A little research on this book would surely reveal Peters' fabrications:
Reviewing the book for the January 16, 1986 issue of The New York Review of Books, Yehoshua Porath wrote that Peters made "highly tendentious use -- or neglect -- of the available source material". But more crucial, he wrote, "is her misunderstanding of basic historical processes and her failure to appreciate the central importance of natural population increase as compared to migratory movements." Porath concluded:
"Readers of her book should be warned not to accept its factual claims without checking their sources. Judging by the interest that the book aroused and the prestige of some who have endorsed it, I thought it would present some new interpretation of the historical facts. I found none. Everyone familiar with the writing of the extreme nationalists of Zeev Jabotinsky's Revisionist party (the forerunner of the Herut party) would immediately recognize the tired and discredited arguments in Mrs. Peters's book. I had mistakenly thought them long forgotten. It is a pity that they have been given new life."
In 2002, the editor of Objectivist Magazine wrote: "I have focused on the critics' claims. From Time Immemorial is work of propaganda, with all the bad connotations that term carries. Peters'[s] case rests upon distortion and fabrication. Time and again, she misconstrues sources in a tendentious manner. She cribs uncritically from partisan works. She conceals crucial calculations, and draws hard conclusions from tenuous evidence. She speculates wildly and without ground. She exaggerates figures and selects numbers to suit her thesis. She adduces evidence that in no way supports her claims, sometimes even omitting `inconvenient' portions of the citation. She invents contradictions in sources she wishes to discredit by quoting them out of context. She `forgets' undesirable numbers in her calculations. She ignores sources that cast doubt on her conclusions, even when she herself uses those sources for other purposes. She makes baseless insinuations and misleading claims."
Time to Read this Book.......2007-09-20
Everyone should take the time to read this book. It may disqualify many of the myths and beliefs Westerner's have about the Middle East. Knowledge combats illogical prejudice, newscasters, and attempts to sway other's thinking.
Debunks Arab Propaganda.......2007-08-19
I thought I knew everything about the Arab propaganda machine. But, what a surprise. Here is a writer with the guts to tell it as it really happened, not as the bleeding hearts for "Palestinians" say it happened. Israel has made mistakes, as any country has, but the greatest mistake was not using Ms. Peters as its spokesperson.
Average customer rating:
- "I sat down on my Brooks Brothers shirt and pronounced my own name out loud."
- Relevant and moving
- All the heart that Portnoy lacks...
- Great debut, beginning of a great career
- Goodbye, Columbus
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Goodbye, Columbus : And Five Short Stories (Vintage International)
Philip Roth
Manufacturer: Vintage
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0679748261
Release Date: 1994-01-13 |
Book Description
Roth's award-winning first book instantly established its author's reputation as a writer of explosive wit, merciless insight, and a fierce compassion for even the most self-deluding of his characters.
Goodbye, Columbus is the story of Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin, he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills, who meet one summer break and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella is accompanied by five short stories that range in tone from the iconoclastic to the astonishingly tender and that illuminate the subterranean conflicts between parents and children and friends and neighbors in the American Jewish diaspora.
Customer Reviews:
"I sat down on my Brooks Brothers shirt and pronounced my own name out loud.".......2006-10-25
First Love is a really wonderful novella that was the first work of Philip Roth. It was published in 1959 and won the National Book Award.
What makes it so wonderful? The quality of the prose is exceptional. It is precise and often poetic without ever using that overly precious tone from which many short story authors suffer. Roth takes careful aim at upwardly mobile Jewish life-- most of the stories in the volume look at least subtly at the internal (identity) clash that arises as Jewish families start integrating into the mainstream middle class. What's nice is that he is unflinching and often critical without ever feeling as though he were being mean. Goodbye Columbus is beautiful and thought provoking, wry but not bitter.
The novella is published together with five short stories, "The Conversion of the Jews", "Defender of the Faith", "Epstein", "You Can't Tell a Man by the Song He Sings", and "Eli, the Fanatic". "The Conversion of the Jews" is generally considered the best of the lot, but personally I was more drawn to "Defender of the Faith". All five stories are worth reading, even if they are not as strong as the title novella.
Highly recommended.
Relevant and moving.......2006-07-12
Are you neurotic or psychotic? Do you worry and obsess over little things or see sombrero-wearing orca whales tangoing with sea anemones in their teeth? Then you should either read Goodbye, Columbus or seek professional help. Following Neil Klugman through a summer of indecision, sex, and straddling of social strata, the book is as relevant today as when it was published in 1959. Also, don't shirk reading the five short stories that follow it. They're great. And I know your mother and I didn't raise you to be a Lazy Jane.
To read more reviews check out Void Magazine's website.
All the heart that Portnoy lacks..........2005-08-15
I find Philip Roth's debut novella, Goodbye, Columbus, to be much more enjoyable than his more famous work, Portnoy's Complaint. For one thing, Columbus is much shorter - it gets to the point. It is not endlessly repetitive, the way Portnoy is - nor is Roth as full of himself in this more modest work.
Goodbye, Columbus has all the heart that Portnoy's Complaint lacks. It is the proverbial "coming of age" story of Neil Klugman. Neil is the Philip Roth stand-in - like Roth, he is a poor Jewish boy from Newark. He has his first great love affair with Brenda Patimkin - a rich girl from Short Hills. Brenda is all he could ever want in a woman, so everything should be perfect...right? The reader may guess at the stops along the way, but predictability isn't really the issue - it's the journey that matters.
I found the short stories in this collection less appealing. They are all on the same theme: the aversion Roth feels towards Jewish-American culture, while being a Jewish-American. This is one of the central themes in his novels as well, but his short stories are not able to support this theme as well as the other diversions that make his novels enjoyable. As such, the short stories are one-trick-ponies, and I found them tiring. Perhaps this is the reason that Roth is known as a novelist and not a short-story writer. However, the book is worth purchasing for the novella alone.
Great debut, beginning of a great career.......2005-04-17
This is Philip Roth's first acclaimed work, a novella about a Jewish twenty-something and the yearnings of young love, and five other short stories. Roth always touches on something completely exceptional by its normality, and tells a story in a gripping, intelligent and thoroughly honest manner. The title story is about a young man who out of youtful desire starts a passionate affair with a Jewish girl, knowing nothing about her or her family. He ingratiates himself into her life and family, while still remaining somewhat elusive and anonymous. He has no real family ties, with parents living thousands of miles away and an aunt in Newark whom he is trying to break away from. It is a fascinating story, providing yet another glimpse into Jewish identity and alienation, of which Roth is one of fiction's greatest exponents.
The remaining stories are also outstanding; remarkably different from the title story, but each providing something of the present day (well, 1950's when the book was written) struggles with identity experienced by the post-WWII American Jew, ranging from a 13 year old boy undergoing training for his bar mitzvah and questioning issues of faith and tempting fate; to a Jewish military sargeant conflicted about how to fairly treat Jewish members of his military battalion.
One can almost taste the honesty, it is so thick. That is what I love about Roth. He has no agenda other than the accurate descriptions of humanity, which in his experiences happen to be mostly Jewish, in all its failings, idiosyncrasies and conflict.
I eagerly await the next installment in my Roth-provided education.
Goodbye, Columbus.......2004-10-31
Goodbye, Columbus is a coming of age story, a summer romance between a poor boy and a wealthy girl. Many themes that were to show up in much more detail in his later works are presented in embryonic form in this novella, his first major work. Being Jewish in America, sex, class boundaries, the American Way: All Roth subjects, all handled with intelligence and compassion.
Neil is the typical poor Jewish boy enamoured with Brenda, the classy, self-assured, rich girl. He shows a rare spark of confidence when he calls her for a date after first meeting her at a swimming pool, when she accepts and they meet, he finds that he really doesn't know what to do from there. But, they bumble through the beginnings of a relationship, mutually attracted physically, diametrically opposed socially. Neil has a few 'poor' ideas and thoughts that Brenda cannot relate to, while she accepts such luxuries as a maid or 'getting her nose fixed' with such ease and complacency that we - and Neil - are amazed. Over the summer, their relationship develops further, with the typical ups and downs of love colouring the journey.
Neil is the 'I' character of the story, and it is through his point of view that we watch the story unfold. However, even though the story is in first person, there is never much of his personality revealed through contemplative thought or reflection. Instead, we learn who he is from the way he interacts with Brenda and others, and from the way he studies the events in which he is involved. By the end of the novella, we (mostly) understand his motives and ideas, and though, admittedly, it is a little difficult to imagine Neil existing outside the scope of the novel, that actually plays into the theme of the story. Neil is searching for meaning, for a reason to keep on existing, and he considers that in Brenda, he has found it. Whether this is true or not becomes a large focus in the novel, particularly when, later on, she repeatedly reveals to him that she is in fact her own person, with her own ideas, and that sometimes they won't mesh with his.
Brenda, on the other hand, remains a complete mystery to both the reader and Neil. Because we are never allowed to see her thoughts, and because her and Neil have such a different social background, she is someone who we try to understand, but inevitably fail. At times, Neil will say or do something and she will become upset, or tender, or both, and Neil will be so confused that he simply accepts. This can be frustrating for the reader, because Brenda is an appealing character, and it would be nice for him to have the gumption to search deeper within her for meaning and thought, but unfortunately he rarely does. Interestingly, this doesn't come off so much as a failing on Roth's part as an author, but Neil's as a character.
As stated above, the typical themes and ideas that Roth was to develop more fully in his later works are present here. There is the same easy insight into the mundane reality of life, and the same simple joy in, say, eating a piece of fruit or swimming in a pool. Goodbye, Columbus is a story that focuses on one single idea, that being the summer romance between two people that could not have a relationship in any other situation, and it explores it in a remarkably fulfilling way. Admittedly, the very Jewish quality of the writing and ideas may not be as identifiable for a non-Jewish person, but speaking as a man of no faith, I didn't find it to be all that much of a problem. Also, the casual racism towards African-Americans may be off-putting, but again, it didn't upset the flow of the novel.
To conclude, what Roth has done here is to introduce himself as an author, and for a twenty-six year old, it is an impressive introduction. Having read other works of his, I would recommend it as a good starting point. If you like Goodbye, Columbus - and I am quite certain everyone would - then you will love his later works. If not, not. And at only 140 pages, it is worth everyone's time to check out.
Books:
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- The Post-Birthday World
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- The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban
- The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
- The Simplest Path to Personal and Planetary Awakening, Step One: FREE YOUR MIND: 10 Keys for Unlocking Your Personal Potential, Achieving Spiritual Awakening, ... of Humanity's Ultimate Cosmic Destiny
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- The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded]: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
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